M3GAN

AIiiiiiii!

M3GAN
aka MTHREEGAN
USA 2023
Directed by Gerard Johnstone
Universal/Blumhouse
UK Cinema release print

 Warning: Very slight spoilers for certain kinds of people.

A quick shout out for M3GAN, which I had a lot of expectations for, especially since it was written by Akela Cooper, who wrote the totally brilliant Malignant (reviewed here). Okay, so I’ll have to be brutally honest and say that this film isn’t nearly as good as Malignant, which came off as the best Brian De Palma parody ever... but I have to say I found this one pretty entertaining at the very least. It’s being sold as a horror movie but, yeah, while it uses the same kind of visual syntax as a horror movie in places, there are no supernatural or alien threats in this one so, yup,  M3GAN is securely in the realm of science fiction, I think. Although, that being said, I think it could very easily be cross pollinated with a horror film franchise in due course. Now, I’ve not seen any of the Chucky movies (thankfully) but I can’t help but think that sometime within the next 8-12 years we’re all going to be lining up to buy tickets for M3GAN VS Chucky at some point.

Okay, so M3GAN is an android prototype invented for children to be their play companion. Gemma, played by Allison Williams, is a toy designer who is working on a very overt parody of Furbies mixed with those horrible Funko Pop toys people seem to like these days. But after her sister and her husband die in a car collision with a snow plough at the opening of the movie, their daughter Cady (played by Violet McGraw) is the lone survivor of the incident and busy Gemma has to be the sole guardian of the child. So, despite her boss’ wishes, she starts constructing the proper prototype of M3GAN, which stands for Model 3 Generative ANdroid, to help keep Cady entertained. The android pairs with the first person who touches it, Cady... and learns as it goes, being the guardian responsible for entertaining, educating and, above all, keeping her charge safe. What could possibly go worng... as the 1973 posters for Westworld used to say.

Well, plenty because, as you can see, it’s a variation, once again, of the primary law of Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws Of Robotics, that of not allowing a human to come to harm. And, of course, almost all literature which uses these basic tent poles as their primary set up treats this as a cautionary tale, to explore what can go wrong. And it’s not long before M3GAN finds herself causing harm to others and, pretty soon, developing a taste for it, using her new found killer instincts to keep Cady safe but also to prevent her own discovery as a killer and, failing that, her own survival.

And, yeah, it hits a lot of clichés. There are some nice shout outs and, I’m pretty sure it’s riddled with visual references to the Chucky movies (although, not having seen them, I only noticed one myself) and, well, if anyone remembers the original Robocop movie, there’s a pretty obvious homage which is used three times in this movie (no less).

However, I’d also have to say that M3GAN is a mixed bag because, although I think it will be successful at the box office (as will the inevitable sequels), it is full of clichés from within both the horror and sci fi genres and this kinda works both for and against it. I mean, it’s great in some ways because the audience wants to see all those buttons pushed. But, at the same time, it telegraphs the main human character’s obvious salvation within about ten minutes of the opening of the movie. As soon as Gemma shows Cady something she invented years before and begins to demonstrate it to the girl, you know exactly what form the deux ex machina denouement is going to take, very early on in the movie. Which is a shame... I wish they’d found some other way of doing this which would be more of a surprise but, trust me, as soon as you see something, you’ll know exactly where things will be heading and, also, exactly the location where the final scenes of the movie will be taking place.

Another annoying thing about M3GAN is that, even before it was released, it became a victim of its own success. I remember seeing the trailer quite a while back last year and, apparently, it played very well with a teenage demographic. So, in their distorted, money grabbing wisdom, Universal or whoever was in charge of production at the time ordered cuts and reshoots so it could get a PG13 certificate in the US. So, the goriness was excised and some of the kills were removed while others were re-shot (or at least re-edited) is my understanding. So what we have is a film which is trying to have its cake and eat it... going for the teenage market to rake the profits in rather than go with the original idea of the movie. At least one of the team behind it said they liked this version better as it leaves more to the imagination and, yeah, I can kinda have seen how that might work (although, the film really isn’t scary or even horrific, it has to be said). However, it’s also been said that they’re thinking of re-releasing it in an unrated directors cut so, yeah, they’re going to go for the delayed ‘double dip’ sales when it reaches Blu Ray, I suspect. I’ll just wait until the proper cut comes out before buying this one, I think... no matter how many years down the line it is.

All in all though, M3GAN is a fairly entertaining movie which will even please the younger fans of horror genre movies too, I suspect. There’s no post credits sequence on this one (feel free to leave during the credits so the cinema staff can get their screen clean up started quicker) but there is an obvious sequel option blatantly shown on the very last shot of the movie so, we know those sequels could keep on rolling for a while if they choose to pull on that particular thread. Worth a look but perhaps not all the film it could have been.